For many years, Nigeria had its troubles, but kidnapping was not the defining feature of our national life. Our country wrestled with military coups, communal clashes, armed robberies, and periodic ethno-religious violence. Travelling from Lagos to Kano, Enugu to Sokoto, or Ibadan to Maiduguri carried risks, but the average Nigerian did not routinely fear being seized and held for ransom. Highway robbers were dreaded, and road accidents were common. However, kidnapping had not evolved into the sprawling criminal economy that now casts a shadow over everyday existence.
That reality began to change with the rise of Boko Haram. Founded in the early 2000s by Mohammed Yusuf in Maiduguri, the movement transformed from a radical religious sect into a violent insurgency after the 2009 uprising and the death of its founder. What followed was one of the bloodiest chapters in Nigeria’s post-independence history. Entire communities were displaced, schools were attacked, and military formations became targets. The insurgency spread across the North-East and later gave rise to splinter groups, including the Islamic State West Africa Province, which remains active in parts of the Lake Chad Basin.
Then came Chibok. On the night of April 14, 2014, Boko Haram abducted 276 schoolgirls from Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, in Borno State. The incident shocked the world and birthed the global Bring Back Our Girls campaign. While some of the girls escaped and others were later rescued or released, many remained missing years after the abduction. Chibok was more than a kidnapping. It was a watershed moment in Nigeria’s security history. It demonstrated that mass abduction could generate publicity, political pressure, international attention, and economic reward. It revealed the vulnerability of schools and exposed the limitations of the Nigerian state in preventing or swiftly reversing large-scale kidnappings.
Four years later, history resurfaced itself. In February 2018, 110 schoolgirls were abducted from the Government Girls’ Science and Technical College in Dapchi, Yobe State. Although most were eventually released, the incident reinforced a disturbing lesson that showed that Chibok had not been an isolated tragedy. It had become a template. What began as a weapon of terror was steadily mutating into a profitable enterprise. Criminal gangs, bandits, terrorists, and opportunistic armed groups increasingly recognised kidnapping as a lucrative venture capable of generating huge financial returns while exposing the weaknesses of state institutions.
Today, the consequences are visible across the country. What began as a tool of insurgency has evolved into an industry. The geography of fear has expanded. What was once concentrated in parts of the North-East now stretches across the North-West, North-Central, South-East, and increasingly the South-West. Communities that once considered themselves insulated from such horrors now confront the same anxieties that have haunted conflict-prone regions for years.
The recent abductions in Oyo State show this troubling spread. On Friday 15, May 2026, armed men invaded schools in the Ahoro-Esinle and Yawota communities, kidnapping teachers and pupils. The images were painfully familiar. The location was different, but the trauma was the same. Parents were thrown into panic, communities into uncertainty, and children into circumstances no child should ever experience. The incident was another indication that insecurity respects no geographical boundary once it is allowed to grow unchecked.
One of the most disturbing aspects of this crisis is the continued targeting of schoolchildren. They are innocent, defenceless, and symbolically powerful. An attack on a school is not an attack on individuals; it is an assault on the future. It tells parents that education may carry a mortal risk. It tells communities that learning is no longer protected. It transforms classrooms into halls of fear. The psychological consequences are profound. Children who should be worrying about examinations are forced to confront violence. Teachers who should be shaping minds become bargaining chips. Communities that ought to be planning for development instead organise prayer vigils and ransom negotiations.
There is another dimension to this crisis that deserves attention. In recent years, retired and serving senior military officers have also become targets of kidnappers and terrorists. These incidents carry enormous symbolic weight. The military occupies a revered position in Nigeria’s national imagination. For millions of citizens, it represents the ultimate guarantor of security. When ordinary citizens are kidnapped, society grieves. When senior military figures become victims, society begins to ask questions about the scale and sophistication of the threat confronting the nation.
If those who once commanded battalions, divisions, and strategic operations can be targeted, what confidence should the average farmer, trader, teacher, or student have? This is not an argument for despair but an argument for urgency. The insecurity confronting Nigeria today is no respecter of status, rank, wealth, ethnicity, or geography. It is a national affliction requiring a national response.
Nigeria’s security crisis did not begin with the current administration. Neither did it begin under former President Muhammadu Buhari. Its roots stretch across multiple governments and decades of accumulated challenges. The insurgency in the North-East, the proliferation of armed groups, weak border controls, illegal arms trafficking, ungoverned spaces, poverty, and the gradual erosion of state authority in some regions all contributed to the reality confronting the nation today. But history rarely remembers leaders for the problems they inherit. It remembers them for the problems they solve.
No citizen celebrates the origin of a wound. People celebrate the physician who heals them. That is why the burden before President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is both enormous and historic. Economic reforms matter. Infrastructure matters. Foreign investment matters. But none of these can fully flourish in an atmosphere of persistent insecurity. Development follows stability. Investment follows confidence. Tourism follows safety. Education thrives where fear is absent. Security is therefore not just one policy area among many; it is the foundation upon which every other policy rests.
There is an old saying that when a problem is properly understood, the pathway to its solution becomes clearer. Nigeria knows its principal challenge. We know that insecurity is choking productivity, discouraging investment, disrupting education, and weakening public trust. We know that communities across the federation are exhausted by fear. We know that parents should not have to wonder whether their children will return safely from school. We know that citizens should not approach every journey with apprehension.
What remains is the political will to confront the challenge with consistency, intelligence, and national resolve. Nigeria is still a beautiful country inhabited by resilient and remarkable people. Its story should not be defined by kidnappers, terrorists, and bandits. Criminals must not be permitted to determine the national mood or dictate the future of generations yet unborn. The wounds are real, and their origins are visible (apologies to my bosom friend, Rasaq Malik Gbolahan, winner of the 2024 Anhinga Prize for Poetry, whose brilliant chapbook, The Origin of Wounds, inspired the title of this piece.) The task before the nation now is not to keep explaining them, but to heal them before they become permanent scars on the Nigerian story.
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